Watermelongate and Its Discontents

The past week saw the meteoric flaring and passing of one of those stories about race and the Obama presidency that have occurred regularly since the start of the 2008 election season and which will be with us until at least 2012. This one took place nearby, in Los Alamitos, and involved the mayor's emailing friends an image of a White House lawn, transformed into a watermelon patch. It was captioned, "No Easter Egg hunt this year." The mayor, Dean Grose, didn't even have to wait for his clever jest to be leaked to the public for the inevitable outrage to begin -- he'd sent it to a friend, businesswoman Keyanus Price, who is African American.

Price quickly went to the media to demand a public apology from Grose. These kind of

incidents generally end one of two ways: With the official's head on a platter or with clueless shrugs and stonewalling calls to move on. To his credit, Grose resigned -- both as mayor and from the Los Alamitos city council -- even though Price had never insisted on such an outcome.

Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose

As I say, this kind of thing has come up before. During the presidential campaign a newsletter was mailed from an Inland Empire Republican women's group, with graphics depicting "Obama Bucks" -- play money whose bills featured Obama's picture surrounded by images of ribs, Kool-Aid, fried chicken and, yes, watermelon, plus a reference to food stamps. More recently there was the flap over a parody of an old Peter, Paul and Mary song called "Barack, the Magic Negro," and the